Aerial vehicles capable of vertical and horizontal flight are commonly categorized as VTOL (Vertical Take-off and Landing), STOL (Short Take-off and Landing), STOVL (Short Take-off and Vertical Landing), VTOSL (Vertical Take-off and Short Landing) or V/STOL (Vertical and/or Short Take-off and Landing) platforms. These aerial vehicles usually are not capable of using aerodynamic lift forces during transition between the take-off and landing flight regimes. Further, these designs are inherently focused on balancing the tradeoffs between either hovering and forward flight; therefore, attributes and functionalities enabling multi-domain and multi-environment operability are seldom considered as part of the built-in design intention. On the contrary, it is more likely that past helicopter-like and airplane-like hybrids diminished the operational breadth of their invention as far as multi-domain and multi-environmental applicability.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,823,468A, U.S. Pat. No. 2011001020A1, U.S. Pat. No. 20130105635A1, WO. Pat. No. 2018071970A1, and U.S. Pat. No. 20160114887A1 describe air vehicles with varying forms of thrust-vectoring. However, they do not capture the system-wide hybridization of multi-axis enabled locomotion with multi-directional tilt-actuation and aerodynamic lift generation. Additionally, they are deficient in sub-system modularity, multi-domain applicability, and multi-environment operability.
VTOL aircrafts are sometimes designed with tilt wings, tilt rotors, or include multirotor-like propulsion installed ad hoc to a fixed-wing aircraft. However, these vehicles have shortfalls derived from compromising aerodynamic based flight (the airplane mode of flight) and powered lift (the helicopter mode of flight). On one hand, the requirements for an efficient aerodynamic lift typically come from large effective lift producing surface areas as well as forward speed. On the other hand, in the hovering flight mode of operation, where the vehicle's ground speed is zero, the entire lift generation results from the powered lift system. Vehicles that use wing-like structures require a large operating footprint while those directly leveraging rotors for powered lift have limited forward flight speed and limited payload capacity.
The scope of the present disclosure combines best-of attributes such that not only a diverse operational capacity that is scalable and modular is achieved, but also diversity in mission applicability, in environment and domain applicability, and in market fit.
The overall fusion of a mostly lift, generating body via aerodynamic/hydrodynamic effects or structural frame body with thrust vectoring allows for significant sub-system consolidation and modularity, and provides a wide operational range that is highly attractive to end-users in numerous industries, including but not limited to, the Unmanned Autonomous System Industry, Urban Mobility Industry, Defense Industry, and Manned Aviation Industry.